Just in case you haven’t been paying attention, the US economy has been in pretty bad shape recently. The housing bubble burst in 2008, Wall Street crashed and burned once and it looks like it might happen again, and unemployment reached ten percent nationwide for the first time since the Great Depression. All of that has gone down in a little under three years and companies are still outsourcing work to foreign nations. What exactly are they thinking? As an American consumer, one thing you can do to help is buy US made goods and services.

If all of the money spent by Americans stayed here in the United States we wouldn’t have as deep a financial crisis. Billions of dollars are spent every year on foreign cars, appliances, furniture, and textiles. Price conscious shoppers look for good deals and often find them with imports, but they don’t realize the long term price that we pay when we pass up items with “Made in America” on the label. Jobs are lost, the demand for American goods go down, and stock prices drop here as they rise overseas. Meanwhile, the trade deficit widens and we face the threat of becoming a second-rate economic power. That was never supposed to happen, was it?

Stimulate the economy. Take some of those old foreign imports in your house and toss them out if they're run down or in need of replacement. Feel free to give your local Junk King franchise a call at 1-800-995-5865 to haul them away. Then go out and buy some new American made goods to replace those items. You don’t have to put yourself in debt to do it. There are things you need right now. Just be conscious of where they were manufactured. For electronics or automobiles, make sure you do some homework before you buy. There are stereo systems with American names that are made overseas and cars with Japanese names manufactured here in America. Look at the numbers and decide which purchase best helps our economy. It’s usually the one that provides more jobs.

The average United States consumer buys more than half of their big ticket items from foreign manufacturers. Most of their clothes are also made overseas, though in many cases they don’t realize it. Labor costs in other countries are much lower than here in the US, so textiles and plastics can be manufactured for less. That low operating cost is reflected on the sticker price of an item in the stores. Even with taxes and tariffs, importers can still compete with domestic manufacturers. That’s why label checking is so important. Start by going around the house and checking labels on your existing items. If its foreign made and near the end of its use anyways, you can really help out by recycling that item and replacing it with some well made US goods.